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Concerning Nell:snow and critters
It’s a bit tricky, watching the fiction of my grandmother’s life become increasingly fictional. Or rather, now the novel is out, seeing her actual life appear in greater detail and clarity. Letters have turned up, and new images, giving new impressions. The letters, written to her daughters, show a woman more socially involved, in later…
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Concerning Nell: mushrooming evidence
Long-dormant drawers and box-files are being opened, yielding up photos that bear actual, if blurry, evidence of Nell’s presence in my life. Here’s our family, we the first two kids of five, down from Christchurch, visiting our grandparents’ new-to-them Dunedin house. The aunt I’ve called Flick in the novel was an artist, with an artist’s…
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Concerning Nell: our altered view
Nell has been out in the world for two months now. Thus far, all feedback has told me that readers find resonance in Nell with their own life, with their mother’s or grandmother’s; with the landscapes Nell inhabits, and with how she thinks and behaves, alone or with her vital others. I like to think…
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Concerning Nell: the concrete house
Our grandparents built one of the earliest concrete houses, in the late 1920s. I shudder with cold to think of those dense walls deep-chilled by the Maniototo frost. Here it looks about half done. As I write this, two (or is it three? they’re ubiquitous) electricians are going from room to room opening plug outlets…
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Concerning Nell: Nude on a sofa
There’s a character in Nell I’ve called Ilona. She’s Nell’s sister-in-law, an artist in an era of conformity and mainstream suspicion towards those who devoted themselves to an experimental, creative life. ‘Black sheep’ sums up the family’s early view of her. These days we’re proud of the enormous body of work she produced and of…
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Concerning Nell: hacking it
‘When chopping walnuts put them in a sponge tin and chop with a mustard tin. Four edges to chop with, & the tin to keep the walnuts from spilling.’ Genius. In an earlier blog I showcased the little green notebook with the meticulously copied handy hints. I found, on exploring the cardboard box entitled ‘Old…
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Concerning Nell: covering the cover
Making a book cover is always a bit of a mission. Where do you start? What kind of image do you choose, and how abstract should it be? If you have a committee (publisher Cloud Ink Press, author, designer, booksellers, friends), possibilities can multiply just when you need to narrow down the focus.I had blue…
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Concerning Nell: Stains of the past
I’ve had a rummage through the recipe book drawer at the old family villa. I guess this book was my grandmother Nell’s, and Cakes was the best garnished section. I can imagine the buttery finger pressed to the open page, the quick check: ‘one flat teaspoon of soda, same of cream of tartar’, as she…
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Concerning Nell: Handy hints
I found the little green notebook in the aunts’ kitchen the other day. All written in their mother Nell’s hand with an ink pen (it was that or a pencil back in the 1920s, I guess). When cutting out georgette on table dip your scissors in hot water before (and during) cutting. Stew prunes in…
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Concerning Nell: Strand by strand
Cold sou’west rain in late January. Nothing like it to keep a person indoors and contemplating the sedentary work awaiting her. In this case the blog that groans and creaks from under-use. It always helps to start with an image. (Goes hunting through recent pics…) These rough strands? Chimney plugs. Earlier in the summer, when…
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Ratification
It’s in the contract. I re-activate my website and plump up my social media presence. Nell, the novel of my grandmother, will be published early next year with Cloud Ink Press, I’m delighted to report. Meanwhile, Ratty has been on the shelf, perusing the Rosa Mira backlist and itching for re-employment. There’s silver on his…
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Corona Karuna
Lockdown day 21. Two weeks ago the grocery shop felt eerie: the spaced-out queue snaking around the carpark; the sanitiser; the distancing; the grim care we were all taking; being barked at for stepping over a blue line; germ phobia between groceries and car then adding bleach between car and aunt, aunt and car (who…
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Years pass
Turning 61. Life is still its old paradoxical self. (Why does the notion persist, that one day it will fall into order?) Taking it all in is the thing. Muskets and flowers. Trucks and colouring pencils. The presence and the absence of loved ones. Have been reading Anne Salmond’s Two Worlds, coincidentally as Aotearoa reckons…
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Still waiting
Talking with a friend recently whose time is freer than it was. She notices a tendency to fret on her now-unscheduled days. That’s why people go to work full-time, I said. No time for fretting. I was going to be ‘at work’ this week, but without snow, my role as hut manager was postponed along…
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Going to the mountain
Three and a half years since I wrote here, in the hot Northland summer of 2015. Now I’m stockpiling stuff for the cold. For a winter playing lodge manager (‘hut mum’ if the age or behaviour of the ski-schoolers calls for it it) in the Southern Alps. I’ll go fortified by kindness and comfort from…
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Dipping in
Woke this morning in another new house, with a full view of the Pacific and a fat Abyssinian who seems indifferent to our presence unless we’re stroking his ginger sleekness. Over the road, we swim in waves which, in the south, would knock you flat. Up here they churn over you aerated and playful; it’s…
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The state of play
Two years on, still house-sitting, still loving it. ‘Dolphins!’ comes the call from the beach. This month we’re perched between two bodies of water; such dynamism is alluring. In a roar of wind the estuary turns to ink. So, too, is the idea of home: vegetables we shepherd from seed to plate; trees we watch…
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Coining the world
Fork. Sharp. Corn. A-ice. Cold. Cold. Cold. Baby. Rock, rock. Up says Spencer.
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The 32nd 30th
There’s a fine line (there are many fine lines, including those in my favourite shirt) between objectively and wisely questioning what you think and do, and starting to wonder if it’s all wrong: what if I’ve taken the wrong turn here; made a poor choice there; spent my time badly; responded inadequately; pegged my life…
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Following the rise and fall
It takes a while (55 years or more) to learn and trust that life is rhythmic, to learn not to be thrown by the big shuddering in-breath or the (occasionally dis)gusting out-breath. Not to be dismayed by the sometimes-too-long pause between these two when it’s tempting to think something has died and gone forever. Following…
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Autumnal
For the first time in months, socks and shoes. At the bird sanctuary we waited amidst nikau and puriri for tui, bellbirds, kereru, fantails, a robin, and when we’d given up, at last, tieke — the saddleback. Girls in bikinis were swimming out from the beach and surging back through the cavern. In the cool…
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How a day goes
Walked into the sunrise. Read half a manuscript. Strong and unsettling. Swam at the next bay with the girl who laughs in water. Joined the Great Northern Library. The neighbour handed fresh, smoked kawhai over the fence. Kedgeree coming up.
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If in doubt, go in
Salt water is good for many things. A flat mood, for example. Full immersion is best. Add blue waves, a swimming dog, and a girl who can’t stop laughing for the joy of it. Fifteen minutes restores full buoyancy. A cup of tea on the beach is icing on the buoyant.
